Winning medals, but at what cost?

Here is some trivia for Indian sports enthusiasts. Before the IBA World Championships last month in Istanbul, in how many international meets did boxer Lovlina Borgohain compete post her podium finish at the Tokyo Olympics last year?

Between his gold-winning effort in the Japanese capital and last week’s national-record breaking throw at the Paavo Nurmi Games in Turku, Finland, how many events did the poster boy of Indian athletics, Neeraj Chopra, participate in?

The answer to both is, wait for it, zero!

A bit of a break isn’t out of place after such monumental achievements that leave athletes overwhelmed. The medals are a fruition of years of toil and training. You want to live the moment, soak in the attention and savour the adulation. But to go without a big competition for close to a year, when most of your rivals are competing and keeping in shape, doesn’t make much sporting sense. Was it the athletes’ own doing or were they left with no choice but to stay away from competition? Again, the answer to both is a resounding ‘yes’.

Soon after Chopra capped off India’s biggest medal haul ever in an Olympics by hurling the javelin to the gold medal, the entire country erupted in euphoria. From the Prime Minister to a village panchayat head in Haryana and from the Indian Olympic Association officials to state body chiefs, everyone wanted a piece of the medallists, everyone was desperate to share the spotlight with India’s latest superstars. Functions and felicitations followed incessantly, and as a result, athletes either fell sick or were left exhausted.

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Chopra, who attended more than a dozen events in nine days including open jeep parades in scorching heat, had to be admitted to hospital after falling ill during one such function. With the second wave of Covid-19 still some distance away from waning, he and other athletes were exposed to large crowds without masks. While he tested negative for Covid-19, the unending stream of off-field events took a toll on his health. And with that, his plans of competing in back-to-back Diamond League meetings in Lausanne (Aug 26, 2021) and Paris (Aug 28, 2021) went for a toss due to lack of training.

Chopra flagged the issue then in an interview to a national daily, saying, “The attention is indeed important, but there’s a Diamond League at the end of the month. I had planned to participate in it, but my training stopped completely once I returned from the Olympic Games because of the incessant number of functions.

“This is why I feel my fitness is not up there now. I can’t compete properly. That’s why I have to skip the event. I had planned to compete in at least two-three events,” he had said.

More than 10 months after Chopra raised this topic, Lovlina reiterated the downside of sustained felicitation functions and programmes in the immediacy of an international feat.

Soon after qualifying for the Birmingham Commonwealth Games last week, the boxer spoke at length about how attending events, where she was recognised and rewarded for her bronze-medal winning effort with barely a break to either rest or train, affected her preparations, eventually forcing her to go undercooked to the recently-held World Boxing Championships

This was the first international meet the Assam boxer was competing in after the Tokyo Games and her campaign in the 70 kg category ended in the pre-quarterfinals.

“The main thing was that in the World Championship, I wasn’t that strong mentally,” pointed out Lovlina. “I wasn’t able to focus properly. I have worked on that.

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“My aim was to win gold in Tokyo but I couldn’t. After that, in my mind I kept thinking ‘I have to train and do well in the next competition’. But that didn’t happen. After Tokyo, people started expecting a lot. I had to attend several functions also and you can’t say no because they’ll think ‘after winning a medal she’s developed an ego’.”

Rewards and awards are vital for sportspersons but they shouldn’t be stretched to the extent where athletes begin to dread them.

Training without distraction is what brings them to this stage and if that is sacrificed at the altar of felicitations, then it would mean losing sight of the primary purpose. One can say athletes can put their foot down and say enough is enough, but how many will take the risk of hurting the giant-sized egos of the powers-that-be?

“There are moments when you can’t do anything and you have to miss your training. This affects us. A player should be given space to focus on the game. I didn’t think all of this would affect my performance but somewhere it did,” Lovlina added. It’s not just ministers and federation officials that the athletes have to worry about; they also have to fulfil their respective sponsors’ commitments, whether it’s media-related or meeting and greeting fans. This requires setting aside a considerable time of one’s routine and travelling to various cities that can be physically taxing.

As professionals, athletes too should realise what’s in their best interests. By his own admission, Chopra, after missing a couple of events following illness, slacked a bit. He had no control over his diet and his training took a backseat. Instead of adding metres to his throws, he added mass to his once chiselled frame. That meant more time away from competition.

“When I returned from the Olympics, I didn’t put any restrictions on my diet,” admitted Chopra after resuming training in December in the US. “I had been controlling my eating habits for a very long time, thinking I need to restrain myself until I do well in Tokyo. After the Olympics, I gained 12-13 kilograms. I have lost five kgs and have reached my normal off-season weight. It has been 20 days or so since resuming training and I have cut down this much.

“It was really difficult initially. My body was hurting and I had to put extra effort into everything. I was getting physically drained earlier than usual but I pushed myself mentally.”

Of course, India as a sporting nation is a work in progress and it will take some time to emerge out of this feudal mindset. But top athletes voicing their concerns openly might just hasten that process.